Or Eraserhead. I’d say that, with Blue Velvet right behind. As for which is better…
To me, Eraserhead is the only film he’s made that has any kind of value what so ever. It seems so uncomfortably personal and the images he created were outstanding. I’m not too concerned on how he wil bel remembered, but with what is actually good. Eraserhead is his best.
I haven’t seen Inland Empire yet, but I’d choose Mulholland Drive. In a nutshell, *Eraserhead*+*Blue Velvet*=Mulholland Drive. It’s the perfect culmination and expression of everything Lynch seemed to be working prior to it.
Lynch’s work resists “definitiveness,” I’d say.
I’m guessing you’re saying that^ because you think his interests are too broad for one film to capture it all. Yes?
Something like that, yeah. They’re are some thematic threads woven throughout his work, of course, but I’m not sure that early Lynch like The Grandmother and Eraserhead can speak for late Lynch like Inland Empire or crypto-realist Lynch like The Elephant Man or The Straight Story . . . or bad sci-fi Lynch like Dune. And while we’re at it, the David Lynch-Barry Gifford collaborations (Wild at Heart and Lost Highway) seem quite distinct among Lynch films as well. And that’s not even mentioning the TV stuff and the late short films.
When someone casually says something is like a “David Lynch movie” I usually think they mean Blue Velvet and things like Dennis Hopper out of his mind, sultry lounge singing, and severed ears… His name is part of the pop culture vocabulary and that began with Blue Velvet I believe. So in that way it is “definitive”.
Blue Velvet is the first Lynch film I ever saw and it left quite an impression. At that time it was among my top, top favourite films. For a while I may have even considered it definitive, even after seeing such films as Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, and INLAND EMPIRE for the first time. But as the years have crept by I feel it’s not as definitive as I once did. It’s a hard word to apply here for me, but I’d call Mulholland Drive the “definitive” Lynch film; the film has a little bit of every Lynch film in it, but it never seems to be simply rehashing ideas, but expanding them, or at least more smoothly integrating them. The way the film deals with the individual mind as inseperable from both the screen image and the image of oneself within ones “reality”, leads the view down an amazing visual journey in which everything and everyone must be looked twice or more to fully decipher the meaning of their being there at that time.One of the films bigger themes, that of the relationship between objectivity and power and the abillity to become master and commander of a human’s beings psychological turbulance,is something that is going on to some degree or another in many Lynch films. INLAND EMPIRE comes close, very close I think, to being “definitive”, but not in the same way Mulholland Drive does, in my opinion. I think it safe to say his later, mature films are his best and most “definitive”. Taking nothing away from Eraserhead, which is brilliant in it’s own right.
Happy to hear everyones thoughts on this. I feel you have Lynch’s career before and after Blue Velvet. The music, cinematography, art direction and editing just feel like they all came together in Blue Velvet and bleed into everything else he made after (except The Straight Story).
I agree with Two Plus Two’s comments on when someone casually mentions like “David Lynch movie” these elements that people are referring to mainly come from this film. I feel that “Inland Empire” is visually not as strong as it. Nor does the music or tone feel as rich.
Lynch is a director that I wish would go back to shooting on film too.
Mulholland Drive. for me. blue velvet seems to canon and tied to reality to sum up all off Lynch’s work.
I guess I never looked at it from this angle before. Blue Velvet is missing the dream angle of some of his later work. Still for me it has everything else going for it that screams classic Lynch.
Strictly speaking, I would hazard a guess that many more people are familiar with “Twin Peaks,” an extraordinarily popular television series in its day, than have ever seen Blue Velvet.
@Matt
I hear what you’re saying, but I think Straight Story is sort of an anomaly (although maybe those old people from the Midwest could qualify). MD really feels like the perfect synthesis and expression of his concerns and filmmaking style (including Wild at Heart; Lost Highway seems to be a failed attempt or at least not as successful as MD. Never saw Dune, so I can’t comment on that.)
@Peter
If you watch BV, then LH and finally, MD, you can see a progression. Plus, MD is not purely a visceral/poetic film. It actually does make sense.
The Straight Story is playing it, erm, straight, but it’s rooted in a similar “reverse shot” of certain aspects Americana as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Lost Highway. To be honest, to me, Mulholland Drive, while I like it, is just a more cautiously aestheticized (and I’m going to give Lynch the benefit of the doubt and assume this was due to its roots as a TV pilot) version of Lost Highway.
For me, the definitive David Lynch film is ERASERHEAD. In some ways he’s been remaking it ever since.
thanks for posting those links Matt. Never seen them.
I really don’t get why so many people think Lost Highway is a failure. Sure it has problems in the last act but overall it’s a much more exciting and visually daring film than Mulholland Drive.
@Peter
LH seems to want to synthesize Lynch’s nightmare cinema with BV and Twin Peaks type of narratives. The nightmare aspects work well, but the noir narrative doesn’t, imo—primarily because it isn’t very coherent. With MD, Lynch realizes both a coherent narrative and nightmare cinema.
@Matt
I haven’t had time to watch the films, but I’ll try to get to them later.
@Jazzahola
Sorry, what is less coherant in Lost Highway as compared to Mulholland Drive? What about the noir narrative doesn’t fit in? The domineering husband angle? The femme fatale aspect? The manipulated ruffian? The use of locations? It’s just that Lynch uses these certain “cliches” of Film Noir not just to use them but to integrate them in purposefully disorienting ways, and for sometimes initially mystifying purposes. As a film in a time loop, it is still much more coherant than Mulholland Drive (which is similar only to a certain extent), and the use of Noir devices does more to make it coherant instead of less, in my opinion, and also goes a long way in demystifying the film. If anything, the nightmare aspects confuse the Noir elements, not the other way around.
@Thearshman
Is there a way to coherenly explain LH? Or is it mainly a kind of dream/nightmare that defies a rational explanation or interpretation? If it’s the former, I’d be interested in hearing an interpretation/explanation (although I haven’t seen the film for a long time, so I may have trouble understanding the interpretation. However, if you feel strongly that the film has a coherent story, I might be persuaded to re-watch the film.)
“I haven’t had time to watch the films, but I’ll try to get to them later.”
You should when you have an opportunity . . . the first two are very short and The Grandmother, his first mature “Lynchian” film to my mind, is only about a half-hour long.
I interpreted it to be that Bill Pullman had killed his wife in Lost Highway and everything else is psychological detachment. That ending with the warped face? Maybe he’s frying in the electric chair. Or maybe he’s warping into another dimension.
“Blue Velvet” is certainly his most popular film but as strong as it is in parts I’ve always found the suburban satire to be on the nose and immature. The definitive Lynch works, to me, is probably “Twin Peaks”. If it has to be a movie then definitely “Mulholland Drive”.
Yeah I agree with Ben’s take on Lost Highway. Sure it gets a bit excessive and loses it’s way in the last act a bit but it comes together in the end. Lost Highway has a tone that really keeps you on the edge of your seat and style to burn. Two things I wish Mulholland Drive had.
I’ve always seen Twin Peaks as an extension of the world of Blue Velvet.
Anybody pick up Blue Velvet on blu ray yet? On top of the new transfer it has over 40 minutes of deleted footage from his rough cut!
I think Ben is right to a large degree; he kills his wife and becomes psychologically detached. Unfortunately , a dark force becomes attached to him in the process, which “he invites”; here he is driven to a younger person whose life he can inhabit, transferring his psychological confusion over his wife’s death to the young teens subconscious. This is when temporal displacement comes into play and different era’s seem to be depicted in various ways. The duel character aspect is presented as well with the two versions of the wife, one depressed and unfulfilled by a brooding husband, the other murderous and unfulfilled with a monetary mean streak. In her death she too has been carried into a dark abyss, much like her husband, and comes out as an aspect of her former self, the blonde. When she says “you’ll never have me”, it is because she is already dead and he is fucking the dark shadow of herself which is all he can now have; this is when self-realisation occurs and the kid transforms back into Fred.The bloody nose the young teen gets is a foreshadowing of the change back into Pullman’s character, the blood representing both murderous plots converging back into one. Another duel character is Dick and Eddie, who are presented as separate people and the same person in different instances. If “Dick Laurant” is dead in the first 2 minutes of the film, then perhaps the Lost Highway is a highway between past and present, or an amalgamation of murderous plots used by a dark entity to claim dominion over souls fallen into darkness. Either way, Pullman’s character has a degree of realisation at the end when he accepts his fall from “reality”, and turns back into himself, murdering Mr. Eddie in an angry rejection of his psychological predicament, unknowingly becoming a multiple murderer. Eddie’s name is Dick in the film’s beginning, and Dick is already dead..but this is the Dick whose name is “Andy” from the mansion in my interpretation, he is simply another cog in the wheel of the dark controlling force at work, a weathly source of debauchery and decadance. My theory is that Eddie and Dick are rotating realities in much the same way as Fred and the young kid are; the mystery man is engineering their downfall by ensnaring Fred and the kid in this plot. The reason the teen is chosen for this by Lynch seems to be as a cautionary tale, that he could end up in jail like Fred if he doesn’t wise up, which is why we first see him in a prison cell, and often see him moralising over the rightness of his behaviour. The moral is that in the material world one will be endlessly running away from the law (which is what Fred is doing at the end), which is enough to drive one mad; but Lynch warns the consequences of murder and rage may be cyclical,long-lasting, a psychological highway on which we become lost. Funny, how secrets travel.
Still is. Definitely. I love Blue Velvet! I watch it everytime there’s this wonderful urge to see it.
@Peter Smith:
To me, there is a key difference between “Blue Velvet” and "Twin Peaks. In the former, Lynch seemed uncomfortable with his undeniable love of suburban americana, to the point where the film is littered with cheap shots and the broadest of self-aware satire. As strong as the segments focusing on the “undercurrent” of depravity are, in my eyes they never truly reconcile with a “surface”. “Twin Peaks”, on the other hand, wears its love of suburban americana on its sleeve while never shying away from the underlying darkness. I wouldn’t call “Twin Peaks” an extension of “Blue Velvet” so much as an evolution from it and a more mature work. How much of that was David Frost’s input? We will never know but the result is fucking beautiful.
For the record, I love “Lost Highway” and feel it is right up there with the best of Lynch’s output.
Eraserhead is what Lynch will always be known for. It’s like that now. Whenever someone mentions Lynch, Eraserhead is a;ways the film that first comes to mind. That will never change. But Mulholland Drive is his masterwork, imo.
BLUE VELVET is rough around the edges, but it encompasses the majority of Lynch’s tropes and ideas. In that sense, it is a key fixture in his filmography, if not the key fixture.
peter smith
Last week I was talking to someone who is in their early 20’s about Lynch’s body of work. I mentioned how he will always be remembered for Blue Velvet. I explained that even the haters of his work admire it and many critics believe it should be in AFI Top 100. He disagreed and thought Mulholland Dr. would be remembered as the definitive work of his career.